Google Just Kicked The Crap Out Of Predators That Exploit The Working Poor

Google has decided to put the kibosh on advertising revenue for predatory lenders. Those wonderful people who offer you nice little places where you can do everything from paying your phone bill to taking out a personal payday loan have been trapping people into a cycle of re-borrowing that becomes a regular stop on Friday afternoon rather than a hand to get through a particularly tough week. Customers pay interest rates in the double digits and find themselves at the maximum borrowing limits, meaning a bigger chunk of your paycheck is coming from the new loan than it is from your actual check, which you just signed over to cover the last loan.

It’s an issue that affects the working poor almost exclusively. If you’ve never been forced to use a payday loan company, it’s an incredibly long and humiliating approval process, with phone calls from the guy at the local check cashing place making their way to your boss, your landlord and as many family members as they can find so they can harass them all when you’re 4 minutes late on a payment. They make you sign a personal check as physical collateral but refuse to deposit it as the means of payment, forcing you into the store to make a payment, hoping you’ll decide you need to go for the new, higher amount you’ve been approved for.

Google removing these companies from their advertising menu is a major blow. One of the ways advertisers are so successful are from ads that use cookies to remember the things you search for. Google ads are just that. If you were searching for a payday loan because you were having a bad week once you can bet you’re gonna see all kinds of ads enticing you to go get another one. Not anymore. The only way you’ll find an ad for a predator selling payday loans is if you actually search for one.